Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Mar 18, 2016; 7(3): 171-181
Published online Mar 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i3.171
Major osteoporotic fragility fractures: Risk factor updates and societal impact
Paola Pisani, Maria Daniela Renna, Francesco Conversano, Ernesto Casciaro, Marco Di Paola, Eugenio Quarta, Maurizio Muratore, Sergio Casciaro
Paola Pisani, Maria Daniela Renna, Francesco Conversano, Ernesto Casciaro, Marco Di Paola, Sergio Casciaro, National Council of Research, Institute of Clinical Physiology, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Eugenio Quarta, Maurizio Muratore, O.U. of Rheumatology, “Galateo” Hospital, San Cesario di Lecce, ASL-LE, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Author contributions: All the authors were involved in designing the study and writing the manuscript.
Supported by FESR P.O. Apulia Region 2007-2013 - Action 1.2.4, No. 3Q5AX31.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sergio Casciaro, PhD, Eng, National Council of Research, Institute of Clinical Physiology, (CNR-IFC), c/o Campus Universitario Ecotekne, via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy. sergio.casciaro@cnr.it
Telephone: +39-0832-422310 Fax: +39-0832-422341
Received: July 10, 2015
Peer-review started: July 24, 2015
First decision: September 22, 2015
Revised: November 14, 2015
Accepted: December 7, 2015
Article in press: December 8, 2015
Published online: March 18, 2016
Processing time: 243 Days and 14.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The osteoporosis burden is growing and 9 million fractures occur each year worldwide. Unfortunately, because of the underutilization of available preventive strategies, only a minority of women and men at high fracture risk are identified and successively referred for treatment. The aim of this review is to analyze the most important factors related to the enormous impact of osteoporotic fractures on population. Because early diagnosis is the key to reduce the impact of osteoporosis on healthcare system, attention must be focused on the identification of high fracture risk among osteoporotic patients.